Television and the Perpetuation of Black Self-Hatred/A televisão ea perpetuação do auto-ódio negro

Television and the Perpetuation of Black Self-Hatred

The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) recently released another study of the diversity or lack of diversity in the American television industry. In the fourth installment of the report entitled “Out of Focus, Out of Sync, Take 4“, the organization reported a “virtual disapperance” of television programs aimed at the African-American community since minor television networks WB and UPN merged to form the CW network. Only one major television network (CBS) features a cast led by African-Americans. The report also found an 8% decrease of minority actors featured on prime-time programs between 2002 and 2007 and a 17% decrease of minority writers from the previous season. Minorities studied included African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans. The situation in Brazil is even worse. According to study entitled “Where is the black on public TV?”, 88.6% of television hosts and 93.3% of journalists are white. Another statistic showed that 82% of all Brazilian television programming featured nothing about race or approached Afro-Brazilian themes. Afro-Brazilians represent half of Brazil’s 190 million citizens.

In many ways, the struggle for black representation on televison in the two countries represent the different stages of the struggle for equality for African descendants in the two countries. On the four major American television networks, African-Americans, who represent 13% of the American population, actually achieve or slightly surpass their population proportions on television but are severely underrepresented as writers, producers and directors of television programming. After the gains of the Civil Rights Movement in the past 50 years that presented more opportunity for African-American actors in front of the camera, African-Americans now struggle for control of how they are portrayed in front of the camera from behind the camera where opportunities for black writers, producers and directors are rare. For example, in the 2005-2006 television season, black writers represented only 5.2% of all writers employed.

For Afro-Brazilians, where some estimate the victories of the Black Movement to be 20-40 years behind the struggle in America, the immediate challenge is still securing roles for darker faces on Brazilian television screens. Some people continue to ask why it is still necessary to discuss the issue of the lack of diversity in front of and behind the television camera. The answer remains the same. The mental and emotional stability and well-being of both these populations after having endured hundreds years of slavery and post-abolition racism, exclusion and white supremacy has still yet to be fully addressed in either country. A number of authors have written about the sickness of self-hatred perpetuated by a system of white supremacy that has been disasterous for the self-esteem of millions of African descendants throughout the Diaspora. Within the psyche of many blacks, there remains a rejection of blackness and a lack of self-love that manifests in the high rates of black-on-black violence, the desire (acknowledged or denied) to be white or produce white or lighter-skinned offspring and the overall adoration of whiteness. The invisibility of blacks on television and or their negative representation when they are presented, represents at best the opinion of the dominant society that blacks are inferior or at worst, they should disappear.

The power of television and the overall media resides in the acceptance of this thesis by the excluded population that has yet to address the psychological horrors and wounds that have been inflicted over the duration of its existence.